Z'ha'dum

Jeff: Welcome to Babylon 5 for the first time, not a Star Trek podcast. My name is Jeff Akin and I am watching Babylon 5 the first time.

Brent: And I'm Brett Allen and I'm also watching Babylon five for. The very first time Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters. Jeff, are we veteran Babylon five podcasters yet?

Jeff: Almost there over halfway. There

over halfway.

Brent: All right. Veteran Star Trek, podcasters watching Babylon 5 for the very first time doing a podcast on it.

Searching for Star Trek, like messages, not comparing Star Trek, just searching for Star Trek, like messages within the series and trying to decide just how much we like this series.

Jeff: And to basically prove, we're not talking about Star Trek or comparing it to Star Trek. We play the rule of three, one of our games. That limits us to no more what?

Brent: sorry to prove that we don't talk ab, that this is not a star. We're not comparing it to Star Trek. We're going to limit how many times we can talk about and compare it to Star Trek

Jeff: Uhhuh. We have zero self-control. None whatsoever.

Brent: Oh.

Jeff: Well, to prove that we're not comparing this to Star Trek, we play a game, one of our many games where we limit ourselves to only three references, a piece to Star Trek during the entire conversation. That's it. Three. Those no substitutions, exchanges a refund. Hey, Brent.

Brent: Hey Jeff.

Jeff: Next week we are closing out season three.

It's our wrap up.

Brent: Jeff. You just, you just, man. It's like you're a teased dude. Like you got me all excited, like, cuz that's, you've trained me. It's like Pavlov's dog. You've trained me for that. Hey, Brent. I'm like, yay. Can you, can you at least satisfy me? L give, gimme a little. Oh yeah.

Jeff: Oh, yes.

Brent: There you go.

Jeff: I cannot wait to hit that button so many more times. I am taking a little break from our normal sharing right here, so that we can get, when we get into the episode, we can focus on the episode and get through it. Listen. Next week we're closing out season. I can't believe I'm saying this. We're closing out season three.

Like we're there, like, oh my gosh. And we're gonna wrap it up just like we did with the first two seasons as well. And in that wrap up, we're gonna do a giveaway. And this giveaway is similar and different. I would say a little more than equal, but still opposite of our prior giveaways. You leave us a rating, a review, you make sure we see that rating and review.

You take a screenshot of it, right? You tag us on Twitter at Babylon first, email us babylon five first gmail.com, or you just leave the review. Either way, it's fine. We're gonna draw not one but two of those reviews and the winners are gonna receive Brent Tellum, what? They're gonna win.

Brent: Well, Jeff, you are gonna win straight from our good friend wash and his 3D printer. This all gray metallic pewter 3D printed star Fury complete. With Cannon Blasters e injectable cockpit, which doesn't actually eject thrusters wings to control your direction and, uh, object may or may not really fly back to you in the studio, Jeff,

Jeff: I can't wait to do this. These giveaways are one of the my favorite things that we do. One, I love reading all the reviews every week that come in from these things. And also, it's just really cool to share the incredible generosity and the work that Wash does for these. And we all get to share in a little bit of Babylon five.

So get those ratings, get those reviews in next week. That means do it right now, like literally right now as you're hearing me say this. You're one of those incredible people who was a little late to the game and are catching us after this aired. You can still leave us a radio review. We're probably not gonna be able to draw your name though, cuz we, we did the drawing back in September and it might be like 2026 when you're

Brent: Although Jeff, to be fair, what we know from this show is that future events definitely impact past events. So you in the future, hello, future, uh, write us a review. And you never know how that may travel back upon the timeline into this moment right here. I'm just saying it's possible.

Jeff: Yeah. We don't know

Brent: Well, Jeff, uh, since we're not gonna get any reviews today, I don't think we're gonna do any recaps.

Jeff: really?

Brent: think we're gonna review any recaps from last week. I don't, I'm just joking. Of course we are. Jeff, this is the part of the show where we take a look at the, at the prediction that you and I made last week about what this episode was going to be about.

And we see just how close we were. Jeff, what did you say this episode Zaha Doom was gonna be and how close were.

Jeff: So I thought that Anna was gonna lure Sheridan to Zaha Doom and at a very high level that that happened. But I was specific in how I thought she was gonna do it. Right? We're gonna get the morden, what do you want, John? What do you want? And uh, it turns out Anna's very different than Morden in what happens.

So I'm a little deflated on my victory parade, but it'll be a victory parade nonetheless. I also guessed that, um, we were gonna see like, uh, a version of a death of Sheridan. Um, and we did, we did. We saw him. We, we saw what we saw and I thought that the shadows were gonna, like, we were gonna get that cliff hanger at the end of the shadows, just enveloping Babylon five.

And that is not quite how it went down. I had a lot of the

Brent: the opposite of that.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, I had a lot of the pieces. I had 'em very much, um, in the wrong shapes, colors and places. What about you?

Brent: Well, I mean, Jeff, the, the whole shadow's enveloping, um, Babylon five. It's almost as if you, you caught a screen grab that you knew was towards the end of the episode and you're like, that's what's gonna happen. You just didn't see the actual end.

Jeff: Well, I think I actually saw it happen in a two-parter called War Without End. And, uh, we're on a path to the future.

Brent: Oh wait, Jeff, how long has it been since War Without End?

Jeff: it's been over, it was, uh, well the one episode, I think the Rock episode was Z minus 14 days, so it was

much more, it, was much, much more than eight.

Brent: Yvanova's thing was eight days, not eight weeks. Right. Okay. Okay. Well, uh, what did I say this episode was gonna be about? I said that, um, this was going to be the thing about why Sheridan should or shouldn't go to Zaha Doom, that we keep hearing about people saying, don't go to aha doom, don't go to

And I said that the, we'd figure out what this was all about, which I guess we did. Although I, I we're kind of in the middle of the story. We really don't know exactly what the, the resolution of this will be, what the fallout of this one will be. We we're not quite to that spot, but I said that Anna would be tempting John to go to go and Dylan would be saying no.

Um, and I got all of that right. And I also said though, that Kosh, the piece of caution that's inside Sheridan would be like, now you can go because I'm with you. That was not what happened. In fact, that piece said, don't go. Now, I don't know if that was that piece or if it was just memory, but you know, either way he said, don't go.

But then we did hear Kosh be all like, Hey, do it. Do it. Do it.

Jeff: He also channeled, um, an old Earth Classic and said, might as well jump, jump.

Brent: Little Van

Jeff: Go ahead and jump hump.

Brent: Whoopy Goldberg.

Jeff: Oh, that's Van Halen.

Brent: From, from, uh, uh, whoopy Goldberg was in that movie. The Yes. Jump from Van Halen. I, I'm probably confusing at all. There, there was a movie with Whoopy Goldberg where Van Halen's jump was part of the soundtrack, and I thought it, I thought it had something to do with the title of the movie.

Jeff: that's a nice way of backing your way out of not knowing who Van Halen

Brent: No, I 100% knew who Van Halen was. Literally listened. What, uh, uh, dive Down

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: Uhhuh was listening to that episode, or that episode, that album earlier this week,

Jeff: Okay. Okay. That's fair. Hey, in between listening to Van Halen Classics and listening to Kosh Belt them out, we just alluded to a bunch of pretty wild stuff that happened in this episode, and so if people haven't watched this in a while, if they're not sure which season finale that we are watching today, or if they've never watched this before, ever, Brent, why don't you let everyone know what Zaha Doom was all.

Brent: So where were we the last time we left off? Uh, Dalen was being sweetly creepy and watching Sheridan sleep according to Mbar tradition, that's what you do when you're in love, when suddenly the door opens because who locks their doors at night on Babylon five And in walks none other than Anna Sheridan, John Sheridan's wife, who was presumed dead on Zaha doom, the planet of the shadows.

Anna quickly dismisses the other woman. And then she lays it all out for her hubby. She's here to take him back to Zaha Doom. There's a lot of mixed emotions about Anna's return. Franklin confirms that this is indeed it. It Franklin confirms that this is indeed Anna. There's a little scarring on the back of her neck, but you know it's still her.

Sheridan actually blows up at Dylann whom he blames for keeping this from him. He says he doesn't actually know if he can even trust her anymore. Dylann says that the shadows kill all of those who refuse to work for them, and John says there's absolutely no way that Anna would ever go work for the shadows.

And they can't really reconcile the two, except Anna's working for the shadows, except she didn't. And they did something to her and we'll, we'll get into all of that as well. Anna insists to John that the shadows, as he calls them, cuz that's not actually their name, are really just very misunderstood creatures.

They're benevolent, they're good. And that old Kosh and Dirty Dalin, they've been lying this whole time and now she wants to take him back to Zaha Doom so that he can hear the other side of the story. Yeah, that's the ticket. He'll buy that one. As Anna contends to be, as Anna continues to be all kinds of shady with John Londo is informing Veer that he londo has been promoted to the royal court, which really isn't a promotion.

It's really just a way for them to keep tabs on lawn and if he does anything suspicious, he gets a red smile. Also, Franklin has compared some of his. Also Franklin has compared some of his findings on Anna, particularly those two little scar marks I mentioned a while ago. And they match up exactly with these two little scar marks that were on the back of Buster's girlfriend.

Remember her on the back of her neck where she had her shadow implants. Uh, um, implanted. Sheridan becomes aware of all this and he still agrees to go to Zha Doom, but he has a little confidential job for Gu Baldy and he leaves a confidential message for Dylann and yeah, he actually knows what's up, but he's going anyway.

Flash forward to the planet Zha Doom. Sheridan meets two of Anna's associates, one an old man who sort of seems to be the ringleader, Justin and the other Za. Dear old friend, Mr. Morden. They try to convince John that the shadows are all, they try to convince John that the shadows are the real innocent ones in the galaxy.

They're the same thing as the Volans. They're first ones and one of only two races who decided to stay back and help the lesser species evolve. How awesome of them is that? Well, the volans do it by strapping you to a religious system and putting a bunch of rules and regulations to burden you down and trying to make you peaceful.

Ah, that doesn't work. You see, if you really want to help a species involved and grow quickly, it takes conflict. It takes war, it takes fighting, and only the strongest survive. Sure, you lose a few here and there, but that is an acceptable loss. Sheridan. Like us isn't buying it for a minute. He not so discreetly pulls a hidden P p g from his sock because nobody thought to pat him down.

And he shoots a shadow creature that just comes into the room, flashback to Babylon, five immediately afterwards. And the station has been surrounded by all the shadow ships. They're poised to take out the station as soon as they receive Word of what Sheridan's choice has been. All right, flashback to Sheridan, back on Zaha Doom.

He's now in a cave with blood trickling down his head and he's absolutely exhausted trying to pull himself up on the rock with the last remaining bit of a strength. Wait, wait, Jeff, did we miss a scene? Did we did? Was there a cut scene that we just didn't get? Because I don't know how we got like that. I guess we're just gonna have to use our imagination.

We can fill in the blanks. Suffice it to say, uh, Sheridan Bleeps, a couple of bloops on his hand communicator calling his own personal bat mobile, which is loaded with some nuclear explosives. Awesome. Anna tries to convince him to stay and join, but at the behest of the disembodied voice of OB one Kenobi, John jumps into the great Sarla pit of Zaha Doom, just as the white star crashes through the dome and explodes doing enough damage to Zaha Doom that all those ships way out there surrounding Babylon five turn and bug out back on Babylon five Delin is watching a goodbye video that John recorded just before he left.

He tells her that he was gonna try to stop them and maybe in doing so he could change the future, except what if maybe him doing this is what caused the future to happen. And they were trying to prevent that when they said Don't go. Saying he didn't think about it all the way through. John also tells Dylan that he's gone and that he loves her and he wanted to be with her, not Anna.

She cries Gu. Baldy. Well, he flies a star fury into one of those shadow ships and has taken back to Zaha Doom. Why? I guess we're just gonna have to find out next season on Babylon five. Jeff, what did you think of the season three finale of Babylon? Five Zaha Doom?

Jeff: I didn't expect almost any of this to happen. This is not at all the episode I thought we were

gonna get. I, I thought, I thought we were gonna get some big battles. I thought there was gonna be conflict and like that we've kind of seen in, in, in other pieces. And I feel like we've been fooled into this false sense of security in season finales.

Right? Both, uh, Chrysalis and, um, fall of night had like a slow kind of start to 'em, you know, just, oh, it's another episode. And, and they didn't really pick up speed. It just moved into a really fast speed, you know, for, for those. And so this one started out kind of slow a little bit and I was like, okay, okay, this is what's happen.

Really, this episode was some cool effects, but almost all talking, this was an episode of People Talking. Now for those of you listening or watching that have been bagging on Brent and myself all this time for watching this through a Star Trek lens, right? You're just like, you're watching this through a Star Trek lens and you're missing the point you don't under, you're not gonna see the point.

It's not gonna work through this lens. We've been specially trained to not only watch episodes that are all talking, but to deeply appreciate episodes that are all talking. It totally paid off. Anna's not what I thought she was gonna be, right? I thought she was gonna be a morden. I like the lore behind that.

Like, we'll, we'll talk about that some, but I, I'll just say I'm a little bit disappointed. . Um, and that, you know, she was, she was a space, she was a space zombie. Like , like you called out. I do like though the seeds that were sewed that said that basically death of personality was a shadow trick that was taught to earth in there.

I got some

Brent: Oh, I didn't make that connection.

Jeff: yeah, so there's a whole thing where basically like Morden's talking about the genetic manipulation and how they made Telepaths and at the same time the shadows got into bed and made Cyco, like Cyco is a shadow creation,

Brent: Is it,

Jeff: I think. Cuz they were like, oh, Volans are making telepaths to come get us.

So we'll go control the telepaths and make sure we can keep them under lock and key. And then they use the death of personality stuff through their ships and it all, all the dots are kind of out there. I don't, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm wrong, but those are the dots. That's how I connected 'em.

Brent: Huh.

Jeff: I, I have some fundamental questions about Sheridan's actions in this one.

Like, this was a great episode, but there was some stuff with Sheridan that just didn't line up with kind of what we know of him, so we'll, we can dive into those things, but I, I don't buy his reasoning for going, and I don't buy some of his reasonings in like what he, what he did when he was faced with some of this stuff.

But I gotta tell you, like when they showed his gravestone thingy there at the end, oh man, like I felt like I got punched in the stomach. Like literally this episode took my emotions and went, feel this, whether you want to or not, whether you believe this is a long-term death or not, doesn't matter.

You're gonna feel this because, oh yeah, what did you think of this one?

Brent: Um, this episode to me felt very much, Jeff. Let's just track it. This is the season three finale. This episode, to me, felt very much like best of both worlds. Part one,

Jeff: Oh yes.

Brent: this se this started with the enemy that we know. It started it, it brought them to our doorstep. It presented a problem. It took our captain, it took our hero and bulled him off of the ship and put him into that situation. And at the end, we leave him falling down the pit. We have no idea what actually happened to him. We presume he's in the next season, , right? Like, um, I mean, thi this, this episode ended about as well as, uh, commander Ryer saying, Mr. Wharf fire. And then cutting the episode to go, oh my God, what happened? What's going on with Garra? Baldi? Where is Sheridan? Because we, we know something's gotta give with him.

Um, we, you know, this whole thing just seems, just, seems effed. You know what I mean? And this is, this is exactly what I said. This part of the story has to be, everything has to go to hell. And as part of the story so that the down the falling action side can be how do we get out of it, right? Like, we get up to this, this mountaintop, now we gotta, now we gotta get out of it.

Uh, doesn't mean that the show's over, doesn't mean that things are gonna decline. It just. In that narrative piece to send us back to, to, uh, status quo by the end of the show. So, um, I quite enjoyed this episode. don't have a lot of notes off of this episode at all. I really don't, I don't even have much in the way of Star Trek messages and I feel like I should, but I don't.

This was good tv. It was a great watch. This thing brought so many of the threads that we have been watching, particularly since episode two of season two with Sheridan and his wife brought all of that around. It threw into question the relationship that we've been slow playing between Dylan and Sheridan, and oh my gosh, what's gonna happen there?

We pulled on like when, when Sheridan is talking to Garabaldi saying, I need you to do this, this needs to be confidential. Sheridan's up playing this big tough, I'm pissed off at everybody kind of a thing. And Gar, Baldy turns on and goes, are you sure? And he goes, next time I see you, let's talk about the weather.

And the very next time he is like, Hey, weather's all sunny over here. And you're like, dude, that's code. They just spoke. Oh, oh, Sheridan's it. He knows what's happening here. Like, it, it, I loved this episode. This was a great season finale. I would expect that, se that that season four episode one is gonna be a lot of the Act four, act five, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, lots of action, lots of action, lots of action.

I could be way wrong cuz j m s could completely subvert those expectations. I'll tell you, I don't think this is what's gonna happen, but if I, I said what I was doing, be me up if best of both worlds. And for those of you who don't know, that's a, that's an episode where Picard got taken over by the Borg and turned into a Borg.

Um, if, if that was written in today's world, Picard would not have come back from being a Borg. By the end of that next episode, he would've been the Borg. He would've turned to the bad guy and led the bad guys for at least a season. And that season would've been about getting Picard back, and it would've been way more, I would love, and I know j m s is working on a reboot about this show.

I would love if they do that and Sheridan goes through this, that he actually is turned into shadow man or whatever, and he becomes the bad guy, and it becomes a little bit of like, let's get him back like that. That'd be a su I know. I don't, that's not at all what's gonna happen, but Oh my gosh. Um, I, I can't wait to, I, like I am, I'm mad at you right now, Jeff.

That you're gonna make me stop and do a freaking season three recap instead of, let me go watch this next episode. What is wrong with you?

Jeff: Well I think that for us to grow as a podcast, Brent, we need to have a little conflict. I mean, cuz here's the thing, the shadows kind of explained what, where they were coming from in this one we've been asking for a long time. A couple weeks ago I said, this is the question. What's the deal? What's the end game?

I still don't think we necessarily know the end game right? Unless it's like the most perfect survivor, you know, that evolves from

Brent: Yeah. So, so here, here's the thing. Uh, with that, and I always ha, I always struggle with this. Do we really know what the shadows motivations are? All we know is what they just told us

Jeff: Exactly. Which could be total horse

Brent: could be total garbage, right? This, but let's just assume, let's set that aside and assume that what they were telling us truly is their viewpoint.

That they're, they're literally just trying to help the universe evolve. And the lesser beings evolve by creating conflicts because they believe that that's how folks grow. And there's kind of a point, I mean, if you look at evolution as a thing, survival of the fittest, you don't, you don't go in and pro and propagate the weak parts of the species.

That's how this works, right? So, uh, you know that to, to keep it peaceful makes everything go real slow and doesn't actually do anything. But you've introduced conflict and people evolve. Think of all the advancements in te in technology and stuff that we get when war happens throughout

Jeff: time. Every

Brent: what I mean?

That does not make war a good thing, but it does spur things on. So, uh, they have a point. And the other thing about that is I'm reminded of the Avengers movies. You know, one of the things that for 21 movies, the Ave well, 20 movies, I guess The Avengers did, uh, or, or the, the M C U did absolutely Abysmally was their villain stories.

They were great with all their hero stories, but they were awful with their, their villains were awful. They were stale. They were static. Their motivations often made no sense. And then they get to Avengers Infinity War, which just could have been renamed Thanos because that whole movie was about explaining the villain and giving him his motivations.

And you know what, when you heard his motivations, you were like, kind of makes sense. Like, I'm kind of with you. Like I get where you're coming from, dude, I wouldn't do it that way, but I get where you're coming from. If they just did that with us, with the shadows of like, I kind of get where they're coming from.

They're not just evil. They actually have some benevolent sides to them. That actually, I think, makes them a much tougher and a much more scary villain than just all powerful evil.

Jeff: Yeah. I'm reminded of the phrase iron sharpens iron that you hear. And that's, that's what they're trying to do. And I think, I think to me, it really introduces the concept of the question of does the ends justify the means? You know? And so their end sounds pretty great. You know, it's, uh, Hey, we want. Great strong species.

We want successful races to grow and thrive, but the way they do that is deaths of millions and billions and, and sewing distrust. So it's, uh, I think it introduces that, that concept in an interesting way. But I think it also does the same to the volans. You know, I mean, we kind of question what, um, what's important to the volans and how they portray the volans.

And it's also the same thing where they're, they're trying to uplift and unify people, which sounds great, but are their means cool, like genetic manipulation, introducing religion and, and tweaking society? Is that okay? You know, it it, I, we've asked this question a lot, not just what's our motivation, but our understanding of Babylon five was there's no binary, there's not a good guy, there's not a bad guy.

There are people with motivations.

Brent: and, and you know, you and I have been reminded of this repeatedly, um, throughout the course of three seasons so far. Remember what Kar said way back in one of the very early episodes, no one on Babylon five is what they seem.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: And I think we could look at this and go, presuming that what they said was true, that also includes the shadows.

Jeff: Well I think when he said that he wasn't talking about the station, he was talking, it was like the most meta comment ever. He's talking about the show.

Brent: Yeah, that's what I mean. Like no one, uh, forget on the station. No, on the show is what they seem.

Jeff: So a couple things like since we're talking about the, the stuff, so Justin, right? Justin is clearly the man in between, so,

Brent: okay. Sure. I didn't, I didn't put that together, but, okay.

Jeff: Well, I guess, I guess so. He, he said, he is like, you can think of me as a middle man. And I was like, oh, the man in between.

Brent: I wasn't paying attention to that part, which it'll be a shocker and a folks out there. I know.

Jeff: But I think what, what we learned last week though is that that makes him an equal and opposite to Sheridan.

Brent: Ooh,

Jeff: I didn't buy that, but I don't know. We, we all, we don't have all the pieces. Well actually we don't have anything. There are, all we have are pieces of him blown all against the, the cave wall, Cause I gotta assume that he's, he and Anna are, and Morden are probably all gone like they were on the ledge when that bomb went

Brent: I don't know. Maybe,

Jeff: But he kind of goes through and he tells us the, the motivation, right? So millions of years ago there were all kinds of races and many of them moved on to greener pastures. He says other parts of the universe.

Brent: which we knew that, that, that, yeah. That squares with what we've, what we've known.

Jeff: But he says only two of us stuck. seen the party first ones, the tiki head guys,

Brent: Oh

Jeff: does he not know about them or are they just not as like there's a volans in the shadows into him? The party first ones are actually just other, another race that's out there, he called the Volans the Lords of order, right?

They're the ones that are gonna have you follow the rules and do the things,

Brent: Right.

Jeff: and then they're the ones that broke some deal, I'm assuming that they made and started interfering directly with the races. And they gave the examples of giving to the genetic manipulation to give humans telepathy. And so the, but, but then knowing the Vons have this history of interfering with us and the shadows apparently have been around for a while.

Also, watching this happen and, uh, forming cyco or at least influencing Cyco, if nothing. Have you ever heard, are you much of a conspiracy theory person? I, when I was in

Brent: they're fu they're fun to listen to. But I put zero, like my favorite conspiracy theory of all time is that the entire catalog of Pixar movies is one big shared universe.

Jeff: Oh yeah,

Yeah.

yeah. Well, there's that pizza planet thing that like

Brent: Well, well, but there, but Right. But there's a, like, like, they'll go back and, and put the whole show in a chronological timeline order and actually like, okay, so here's what happened.

And then this happens and this goes here and humans fell here and superheroes rose here. And the, the destruction of humanity happens here, which gives rise to these intelligent machines and. . This actually happens way in the future after humanity is wiped off the face of the earth, and I like it. It's a cool, and then there's like, you get to this water and it actually WAPs wraps all the way back around and starts the whole process from the future.

So it's kind of the cyclical like, it, it's a, it's a cool little thing. So I, I like it. I would know that I call that as conspiracy theory, but you know,

Jeff: there's another fun, uh, conspiracy theory that like thousands of years ago, hundreds, like in the early days of, uh, you know, tribes and things in Europe and whatever, fighting each other and forming modern societies, you know, well, in this one they said it was 6,000 years of recorded war on Earth.

And so like in that timeframe, there's this theory that these beans came to earth that are reptilian and they've been interbreeding. The royal families of all the countries that are out there are actually traced their ancestry back to these reptilian aliens that have come and are forming earth in some certain image for whatever.

It's a, it is a deep, deep conspiracy. Like if you go look at this, there are rabbit holes that you will not come out and un you will come out. A changed person from like it gets, gets wild. But on the surface level. Huh? It's kind of funny. Kinda look at it. I wonder if the shadows are the reptilians and like all those in, for the people out there that are listening and watching who are like, I know that conspirator or who believe it.

Hey, that's fine. It's fine. I don't, we don't know. Right? We don't know. And we appreciate your work and your YouTube videos, uh, going into deep detail on those. Not gonna watch 'em, but I appreciate your effort. But my addition to your little conspiracy theory, pori, is that it's not reptilians, it's shadows that are doing that stuff.

Brent: and the matrix is real. Um,

Jeff: But I, I wanted to say, I, I think I've boiled down the entire vlan and shadows conflict. It's the federation versus the Tarren Empire.

Brent: You know, Jeff, I, I, I'm not sure where this was, but I seem to remember something in a previous episode of, of, of somebody saying that the shadows and the volans were really just two sides of the same coin.

Jeff: Sounds

Brent: they're kind of the same people. I don't, I, I just, I can't quite put my finger on where or

Jeff: a bell.

Brent: I may have heard that from.

Jeff: Rings a bell. I don't think, I think you're making it up though. I don't think that actually happened.

Brent: I'm pretty sure it did.

Jeff: I think you said

Brent: I'm pretty sure I did , I'm pretty sure that I did. Um, why? Because it makes narrative sense. And, and again, I go back to sometimes you can subvert expectations, but most of the time if you set it up, you gotta pay it off. And if you pay attention, now you, and you know who's better than this?

At, at this than I am is my wife. My my wife is, you can do not watch like a murder mystery with her because she's got it figured out within like nine minutes of the episode. You're like, they did not give you that information. Stop it. And she, she's got it. Uh, and you ask her and she's like, it just made sense.

Like it, it's the idea of telepathy, that it was imparted to the races as a weapon against the shadows by the vo.

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: this is not evolution coming to pass. This is genetic manipulation on the part of ancient gods, to be frank with you.

Jeff: Telepaths are GMOs, they're

Brent: right?

Jeff: but here's my problem, right? I, I've been talking about this telepath thing for a long time now, where it's just like, how did no one know this? How was this a revelation for everyone? There was another thing they dropped in this one where Sheridan had Garabaldi set up the white star for him and Melissa, Melissa for him and Anna to get on and fly in, and she's like kind of touching stuff.

She's like, oh, it's gross. It's vlan. And we cannot land this on Zaha Doom because the shadows believe if a VLAN thing touches the planet, it will kill all of us. So this whole time we're sitting on Volans and Telepaths that can just beat the shadows, but we're not doing that. What?

Brent: Because nobody said something, because Kosh or any of the cautious couldn't be like, Hey, they can beat them. We gave it to you so that you could have fun.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. This, this sounds pretty rough. Hey, here's one of our ships. Uh, load up your Cy cops cuz they're super high. Land them on the planet. Boom, we win. Da, the day is

Brent: Didn't actually need the nuclear bombs,

Jeff: Yeah. At all. Just land it. Which by the way, that's low key, just kind of put out there. And they used it for the thing. Massive nuclear mines that can't be detected.

That's terrifying. And Jaar just has access to them

Brent: That's even more terrifying. And why is, why is Al or Sonari Prime still standing if that's the case,

Jeff: Just, yeah, just don't deliver 'em to Babylon. Five. Take him to Centara prime. Boom. We literally, every problem on this show could be solved that people would just say, um, hi. Yeah. Uh, I, I got the thing right, right here.

Here you go.

Brent: right. Um, so I have a theory, Jeff, and this isn't gonna make much sense to you, but one day it will.

Jeff: Okay.

Brent: This whole thing with the Volans and the shadows and Babylon five and Morden and Anna and all of this, this is taking place within the Stargate universe because here you have gods of ancient alien origin that are impacting humanity and people and all the alien races out there.

And they're really just aliens. And you got some of 'em out there that are bad and oh yes, some of them are implanting into humans and using them. Anna is a gold. You don't know what that means. Anna is Auld. I'm wearing my star great t-shirt just to celebrate this method, this, this moment right here.

Jeff's gonna learn about it soon.

Jeff: So you're saying that it wasn't Deep Space nine that stole from Babylon five, but it was Stargate.

Brent: No, what I am saying is, is that Stargate expanded upon the Babylon five myth and that j m s actually, uh, wrote his show to fit into the Stargate Universe, which was established pre Babylon, five

Jeff: Oh, okay. I don't know any of that. So , I was like, so I got questions about Sheridan's motivations and some of this. So he says, he says that we saw this future, or I saw this future, I saw this future, and you Dalen told me, I think Future Dalen said, this future will come to pass. This is gonna happen. So in his own mind he decides, well, that probably happened because in my vision when I, well, not my vision, when I was there, she told me not to go to Zaha Doom.

So I probably didn't go to Zaha Doom. So if I do go to Zaha Doom, I can subvert the whole thing and change it all. There are a lot of wild, wild leaps and logic for him to put in his own brain and not talk to anybody about,

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: that's not the Sheridan.

Brent: And especially, you know, I mean, okay, are you gonna tell me that a dude who's nerd enough to go become a captain in a space force? Situation. You gotta nerd out to be that guy, right? Uh, that he's never read a sci-fi book or watched a sci-fi TV show or seen a sci-fi movie because lemme tell you what, the rules of time travel are always the same.

Changing the past. Irve irrevocably changes the future. And you can't do that because you're gonna mess some stuff up. And even as bad as it was, apparently, he never saw Citi on the edge of forever. As bad as it is, you still gotta let it happen. Otherwise, the Nazis take over.

Jeff: Remember when he was a conspiracy? Now I'm say, remember that one episode where Sheridan was a big conspiracy theor.

Brent: Got one episode, right? Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah, and they had the whole, was it bureau uh, 13. That never happened. And then he, his conspiracy theories, if he's a conspiracy theorist and he, and he's putting this together like I, I don't know, it just doesn't line up.

But not only does he put this whole thing together, but then he believes like so clearly that he, John Sheridan can singlehandedly change the future.

That

Brent: one, but

Jeff: that is the

but he's, he's the, he's one third of the one who is

Brent: the

Jeff: of one, I'll tell you what he is. He's the Babylon five in this episode.

Only in this episode, he's Captain Kirk. Oh. There's a massive interstellar, inter time bad guy thing here. I got it. I got

it.

Brent: even got him with his shirt off in one part of the episode.

Jeff: We did and I'm always here for that.

Brent: Well, um,

Jeff: Yeah. I just, I, I, I don't know. I just, I, I feel like what led him to Zaha Doom doesn't check out with who, what we know of him.

Brent: Yeah, well, Sheridan was an interesting case in this particular episode, and I'm not sure that I tracked fully with where he was at any given moment. He wakes up and there's Anna staring him in the face, come back from the dead as far as he's concerned. What in the world? Jeff, do you remember the movie Castaway?

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Tom Hanks.

Brent: you see?

Did you watch the movie?

Jeff: I did. I was working in the movie theater when that came

Brent: you go. So one of my favorite parts of that movie because most movies wouldn't do it this way.

Jeff: I know where you're

Brent: favorite part of the movie, one of my favorite things is when we get to the end, Hey, spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't z cast away, fast forward by like 30 to 45 seconds. You ready?

Three, two. Last chance. One, when he comes back from being stranded on the. And he meets Meg Ryan, his wife, from 54 different movies. She has been his wife in every universe that Tom Hanks has ever been in. You know what I mean? But she, in the time that he was away and assumed that he was dead, moved on married, established a life and had kids with somebody else, he comes back from the dead for her. And she clearly still loves him. She clearly still has those feelings for him. And at the end, she chooses to stay with her family, not go back with him. Was that fair to him? Probably not. Was that fair to her? No, it was not. But it was the situation they found themselves in. She had moved on. You know what I.

And he got to go on about his way. Sheridan has moved on from Anna. The, I totally 100% understand when he first sees her, there's this shock.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: And Deln goes, well, I better get outta here. And she's like, yeah, you better because I'm gonna talk to my husband and, and Sheridan's like, what do I do? Um, okay, I'm gonna have to have this conversation.

I 100% understand Sheridan blowing up at Delin. What do you mean? You didn't tell me? You didn't give me the choice. You guys made this choice for me. Now, on the other side, they were doing what they thought was best and some other things. And

Jeff: And based on assumptions that were backed with their experience

Brent: and honestly turned out to be true

Jeff: ultimately.

Brent: they're, if you, if you didn't, and, and I mean they told it to you, if you didn't serve the Volo or the, the, the shadows. You were killed? Well, Anna would never serve the shadows. Okay. So she was killed

Jeff: yeah.

Brent: and then they stuffed her into a thing. You just missed that part.

Oh. But we found that out several episodes ago

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brent: and uh, that was when I, when they talked about that, that's when I came back to you, I think. And I was like, Jeff, you might be right about that whole thing. Right? That Anna didn't go morden because I don't believe that Morden is a space zombie. I think Morden just said, Hey, I'll do whatever heck y'all want.

Jeff: You can keep me alive. You can gimme some power.

Brent: Yeah, Justin might be a bad dude, but, but, uh, I don't think Anna was that. And turns out that's actually exactly what it was. And this Anna that we see is not the anno of before, you know. Um, and at some point they don't show us when Sheridan goes, that's not my girl. Now I'm sitting there the whole time.

I'm going, I don't trust this girl as far as I can throw her. Nobody did she, she is trying to manipulate you. She was trying to get you to do stuff and he goes along with it for whatever reason, and he's, he's let Dylan have it and he didn't go back and apologize, but he's gotta maintain his bruises. Uh, this is like three episodes in a row, Jeff, where people have had to maintain their ruse.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: But he, he leaves her a video message for later that says, look, I, I know what I'm doing and this is why I did it, but I love you and I wanted to be with you, not her. Cuz she's dead, she's not here. Oh, hey, by the way, I'm gonna set this whole thing up with Garra Baldi, but I'm gonna be mean and, and angry when I talk to him about it.

Which was he just playing for the camera cuz nobody else was in the room at the moment. As soon as Gu Baldi looked at the little pad he was. Wait, this is what you want me to do. . It's like confidant job. Oh, Don, anyone. And next time we meet, we'll talk about the weather

Jeff: right. You got it. You got it. Huh?

Brent: for the, for the people listening to the audio podcast out there. I just went, wink, wink, wink, wink. Like, you know, and then John goes out and you're sitting there going, okay, he's following her. He's, he's agreed to go with her, not necessarily to hear the other side of the story. He's trying to figure out what the heck's going on with his wife's body apparently.

Right. And he gets out there and, Hey, you gotta gimme your gun. He's got one hidden in the leg. How did they not pat him down, know

Jeff: I know

Brent: on? She apparently didn't know him that well. How did you not see him reaching for that? Thing is, it

Jeff: know. He's like, oh, don't, don't mind me as I reach

down

Brent: pull my pant leg up and expose everything before grabbing.

Like I've seen people hide cigarettes better. Like a PPG is not that big of a device. You know, Morden, by the way, takes the other PPG and sticks it down his pants.

Jeff: I know.

Brent: Every dude learns. That is not the way you do that cuz you're a risk in bad stuff when you do that. And then Sheridan goes in, he shoots the zombie and the next thing we know he's bloodied and he is trying to crawl up a rock.

I mean, Jeff, I did, I space out for a moment like,

Jeff: I thought I did, like when I watched it the first time, I was like, what? And I'm like, oh, that's how I ha like you said, I guess I'm just supposed to fill in the

Brent: I can fill it in with my imagination. But

Jeff: I, I imagine like he shot the shadow. Did Anna beat him up? Did old dude Justin go to town on him? Did, did Morden try and shoot, like what happened?

Brent: Morgan try to shoot him with his own p p G? Did the shadow come in and get a few good swipes on him before fa What is the shadow still?

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: Do they have fragile bodies? Hey, by the way, if a Lon touches them and they automatically die, how did all those shadows go kill Kosh?

Jeff: Yeah. How does that even

Brent: I don't understand. They like have, have rubber gloves on when they were attacking 'em or something

Jeff: They were wearing face masks, gloves, and face shields, and so it, it helped, helped them.

Brent: you know.

Jeff: I think, um, a thing that I loved, well, so let me go back. His initial reaction to Anna at first was jarring, but it totally checks out. It makes sense. You know, like, you're dead. What is going on? And her reaction to him and to Lynn gave it all away to me the second time.

Second time I watched it when I was just, I wasn't just like, what is, what is John doing? Cuz she's like, you Dylan out John, you and me. Zha doom. Let's go. There's no, oh my God, I missed you. I love you. I can't believe, I never thought I'd see there's none of that.

There's no

Brent: running and hugging him. There's no affection, there's, there's none of that. And,

Jeff: just get in the car. We're, we're going to the dmv, we're gonna do.

Brent: and listen. And you, and you get, you get the feeling that John and Anna had a very passionate relationship, shall we say.

Jeff: Yes,

Brent: And none of that was there when she showed back up.

Jeff: there was even the line after, cuz you know, I mean he had Franklin run every test on her and she's like, I don't think anyone's ever examined me that closely

Except

Brent: you.

Jeff: I was like, whoa,

Brent: like, get it, get it. Johnny

Jeff: Yeah. Wow. But, uh, but yeah, so the, and he's got this whole plan and I feel like cuz he had the report from Franklin, you know, that showed everything and he was ready to confront her about it.

But, you know, he, he made a called an audible on the way, and I don't disagree with where he was headed, you know, I mean, based on his actions it made sense. But I feel like he knew early on something was up, Franklin confirmed that thing was, was going on, and then he is just like, all right, so here's how.

Here's how we're gonna kind of move forward with the whole thing. But there was a moment in this whole back and forth and all this stuff between the, the, the triangle of Dalen and Anna and Sheridan that I think was beautiful because Sheridan, when he left, he wasn't fooling himself. He was gonna die.

Right. When he and Garabaldi talked about the weather, there was this really cool bro moment, right. Where like, Hey, it's Snow New York. Oh, that's good. I bet it's lovely. And they like stopped, looked, shook hands, like they knew what was up. You know, and it was just like, it was, it was a, it was a cool moment

Brent: Yep.

Jeff: in Revelations that, that second season episode that, that we learned about Anna, I never got to say, I never got to tell her.

That was 38 minutes. Of the 43 minutes of that episode was him telling us that he never got to say goodbye. He said goodbye to Dalen. He recorded that message. He looked in the camera and he said, I love you. Goodbye. And for John Sheridan to not beat around the bush and say, I lo we saw it with his dad. We saw it when he first expressed in, uh, ceremonies of light and dark to her.

He, he just couldn't say it. He did and he got to say goodbye. I thought that was beautiful.

Brent: character growth,

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: great character growth for him, the kind that you love to see in this moment, and particularly in a, in a big moment that has much more, uh, galactic implications and what's getting ready to happen, you know, and, and it occurs to me, you know, I've just been talking about John's, um, mean he's just John to me anymore.

Uh, we've been talking about his motivations and, and I just want to make clear, I don't think either you and I are, are poo-pooing on it. It's more of a just going back and tracking with him because. This episode watched a second time. You see more of what he's doing when he's doing it. In fact, again, the last like three or four episodes are, have been that idea of like, I'm tracking with you.

If I go back and watch it from the beginning, it's actually something different that's happening.

Jeff: totally. And I think this one, I, I'm, I'm deeply questioning his motivations and whatever, but I'm very confident those pieces will fall into place. This is just, this is part of the storytelling. I'm

Brent: this story's not over.

Jeff: ex by

Brent: of Zaha Doom is not over like whatever the next episode is in, in season four. And I don't think it's gonna be a part two of this, but it's got to, and it'll probably pick up eight weeks later, six weeks later or whatever. But it's going to do something, uh, for where we got, because don't forget, he shook gu bald.

He's hand, but Gu Baldy went out in the star fury, clearly got himself, uh, taken, not destroyed, but

Jeff: I feel like it was intentional. I feel that was like a choice he made.

Brent: Well, and the only thing that I can think of is he is John Sheridan's rescue plan.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brent: j Yeah. Like, he's like, Hey, I need you to go do this cause I'm gonna go do this other crazy thing and when I fall through the pit, I need you to be down on the other side with the Millennium Falcon ready to catch me

Jeff: Right. Yeah.

Brent: You know?

Jeff: I'm not gonna have an arm, but just be ready, have the back to

Brent: right. I'm gonna still have some daddy issues we gotta work through, but we're have the back to tank filled

Jeff: o over the next four episodes, we're gonna Yeah.

Brent: right?

Jeff: or four movies. But yeah, I, I, the first time I watched the episode and. , you know, the shadows were kind of taken off and they're recalling the ships in. And then it showed the literally a shadow come over Garabaldi, you know, not a ship, but just a actual

Brent: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: And so my first thought in that moment was just like, is that the shadows leaving? And we're just kind of seeing that. And then you get that scene at the end of kind of the, oh look, he's inside the shadow. And I'm like, did he get abducted? Did he intentionally move in? I'm not, I feel like you're right though.

There's part of Sheridan's plan that he's set up and he's going in. But my, my fear, my concern, my question, and I don't think that we knew, I don't think Sheridan necessarily knew this, but Grandpa Justin says she made the, Anna made the wrong choice. She chose not to help the shadows, so we hooked her up to a ship.

And people spend enough time in those ships, they never come out whole. How long is Garabaldi gonna spend? Or, or will the Star Ferry protect him?

Brent: I was gonna say he's, he's not connected to the ship in the way that Anna was connected to the ship. At least I don't think so. That's

Jeff: I don't think so. Yeah,

Brent: So I, I don't think that's gonna, that's gonna hit him, but I mean, you know, forget it. Back to tank. She just might need a sarcophagus.

Jeff: I know.

Brent: You don't know what that reference means.

Jeff, stop

Jeff: Oh, Sarov, I guess is where you put a dead body. Oh,

Brent: Is it though?

Jeff: there's more

to it.

Brent: You'll figure it out. You'll get there. Wink, wink. Nudged. Nudged. All y'all out there who do get it?

Jeff: So my last, my last big note that I have on this one is, um, and I feel, honestly, I feel kinda like an idiot. Like this was a realization I had and I was like, how did I not do this math before? So Sheridan jumps, he listens to Kosh, he jumps, he dives. Into the Sark pit. I love I love that you used that reference.

That was so good. But he goes in and, and the whole time I'm okay, so he is gonna die, but he's not, he's not gonna actually die Something, something is gonna come out and he's gonna emerge different and changed. And then I was like, you know, who else jumped or fell and then came out different and changed in a property that JMS is a huge fan of and has referenced throughout this whole series That's Gandolph and Lord of the Rings.

You know why I feel like a moron? Do you remember the name of the place he was when he faced the ball? Rock

Brent: It was not Zaha Doom

Jeff: Kaza Doom.

Brent: Kazam. Wow.

Jeff: Yeah. I'm just like, wow. But he, you know, ball rock, he went in and kazam on the bridge. He went down, oh my gosh. Gandalf's dead. It's, and then Gandolph, the white emerges stronger and more powerful, more wise than ever.

Clock's ticking on Sheridan, the

Brent: So let's, I was gonna say, let's, let's draw this back to what Dylan said in the future. Back when we watched War with War Without End, she's like, yeah, we won, but at a terrible price. What if that price was Sheridan? And whatever this version is of Sheridan in the future that we're seeing is, is some resurrected form of Sheridan.

Jeff: Do you remember what Londo said to him when he first woke up? Like he woke up in Rondo's thing and Londo says a thing. Do you remember what that was?

Brent: what was it?

Jeff: Welcome back from the Abyss.

Brent: Huh?

Jeff: Interesting. I don't know if there's any tie, but it's sure. Interesting.

Brent: Yeah. All right, so let's sum up where we are here. Shadows and voor. Let, let's, let's get the history of what's going on. Shadows and volans are both part of the first ones.

Jeff: Yes.

Brent: The

Jeff: Or the ancient ones,

Brent: ones, whatever, they, they decide to move on. But the volans and the shadows both decided to stay back.

Nevermind Mr. Tiki head and some other things. They decided to stay back for the purpose of helping the younger races evolve. But they have two different philosophies of how it's done. One believes it's done through peace and enlightenment and, um,

Jeff: unity coming

Brent: and, you know, all the, all the things that we would call positive values.

The other one believes that it's through fighting survival of the fitness fittest war. And there's some precedence to show that that's actually true and that yes, as sad as it is to lose a few, you know, it's an acceptable loss, which as a Star Trek guy makes me throw up in my mouth because we value all life. So in order to fight the shadows, the vs. GMO a hundred different planets and inserted telepathy because it can defeat the vo or it can defeat, uh, the shadows. And the shadows fight in every w while they go hibernate. They said the word, they're hibernating, not that they got defeated. They're just gonna go hibernate.

Now, Jeff, I, you and I have speculated and I, I think this story has to be how the shadows die. Not we fought them back this one more time and we're gonna have to deal with them again. Another thousand years. I, I hope that's the, I I'm not interested in just a certain battle that puts them away for a while.

I wanna know the final battle that actually finally kills them, which is why I thought it'd be really cool if everybody was jumped through time and all participating at the same time. But that's not the, the story and that's okay. So that's where we are. John Sheridan. Goes over, sends some nukes in. Now I don't, I don't think that he blew up all the shadows.

I mean, Zaha Dom's a holding planet.

Jeff: Oh, we saw shadows at Babylon five that went and presumably went to

Brent: right, right. And I don't get the feeling that they're, that they're, uh, hive mind, destroy the queen, and we destroy all of them. Do not. That is a sci-fi

Jeff: Yeah.

How

Brent: is overused. Do not buzz me for that one.

Jeff: You're good, you're good.

Brent: Like the Borg.

Jeff: I'm not gonna buzz you still. I'm not gonna give it cause I don't think we have any more buzzes. I think we've used them.

Brent: Yeah, it's okay. Uh,

Jeff: judicious with them today.

Brent: Uh, so that's where we are. And the shadows have now come out of, out of hibernation. This tracks with what we've seen so far in Babylon five. They are creating conflict. They are creating war. They are, they're, uh, instigating war between the species themselves, not just with the shadows.

Right. And the telepaths hurt them and that's why they landed on the Narn home planet and wiped out all the telepaths all those years ago. Um, and here we are and John's falling down some abyss and Garabaldi is on his way out to go find them. And Babylon five is safer for right now.

Jeff: Dalen wrapped it all up beautifully near the end before Ja Car's incredibly delivered and wildly ominous

voiceover. But Dalen just says the past is prologue, and here we

Brent: that's a Star Trek reference. Babylon five just made a Star Trek reference.

Jeff: That's a Shakespearean

Brent: yeah. Well, you know, star Trek is Shakespeare. Um, so, uh, he, but what's he say? What does your car say? There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against despair.

Jeff: Yeah. Oof.

Brent: Oh my gosh. Well, Jeff, I think we have hit that spot where it is time to take a turn away from the story that Babylon five is presenting us. And let's look at the messages. The Babylon five is presenting us. Does this one have any of those Star Trek quality type messages to it? Is it a deep moral message? Is it holding up a mirror to society is giving us hope that we can be better in the future?

Jeff, I'm gonna rate this on a scale of zero to five deltas as far as how Star Trek this episode is. You get to rate this on a scale of zero to five star furious is just how much we enjoyed this episode. Jeff, I'm gonna be quick about this one. I didn't really have much. I could, I could pull threads and, and make it happen.

This was about a story, story, story, story, story. I'm not giving this one. Any deltas?

Jeff: None.

Brent: That's not, that's not a slam on the.

Jeff: No.

Brent: This was an episode that was about the story of Babylon five and the history of the shadows. This was not about any messages or delivering that sort of stuff. Aah, several Star Trek mess, uh, episodes that we've seen before as well.

So for me, it's, it's no Deltas on that level, but you get to tell us how much we enjoyed the episode on your star furries. Jeff, what you got?

Jeff: I do, and one of the things we've been talking about quite a bit lately is Babylon Five's ability to deliver a Star Trek message. Just how, how it does so, and I think that what I noticed in this one, just kind as a, as a commentary on the zero delta rating that I don't disagree with, but it's that the threads that we would pull are the introduction of topics, the introduction of themes that have not yet played out. Len and, and, and I brought it up in the, in the, in the end there. The whole past is prologue piece. Cause I think I've said that, I don't know, 47 times so far through this. Oh my gosh, this is it. Like, now we're gonna get started. Oh, nope, nope, nope. This is the one. Now everything gets started. I gotta think.

This is the one where now everything's gonna get, cuz they literally

Brent: Literally, that's what passage prologue beans is. Everything that's happened to this point has been a prologue. Now it's time to really get down to the nitty gritty. Season four, Jeff has to be a banger of a season if that's gonna be the case.

Jeff: Yeah. It's gonna be wild. It's gonna be wild. But this one, I, I'm gonna make this one quick also. I was on the edge of my seat throughout this episode. Even though this was a lot of talking, it was engaging. They introduced new concepts, they answered questions, they presented new ones. This was an excellent, amazing season finale.

This episode, like I said earlier, this episode made me feel feeling. Like it hit me in the emotions and that that's, wow. It's huge. This is Five Star Furies, five star Fury episode period. End of the day.

Brent: I do not disagree. Jeff, if I could bring one more piece back around that we didn't talk about. Piggybacking off of your, what's past is prologue. Everything that has happened up to this point is prologue as we head off into the future. But what did Dalin also say? We imbar have another saying what is past is also sometimes future

Jeff: Yes.

Brent: and what has happened in the past in their.

War with the shadows, defeating the shadows, great sacrifice. Maybe we're gonna see Valin come back.

Jeff: Maybe

Brent: Maybe we're gonna have to reach back into the past in order to go forward.

Jeff: would be so cool. I

would love that.

Brent: Oh,

Jeff: just, you just want that multi-time point, war

so bad.

Brent: do. I really do. You're you're not joking. I absolutely do. I have no qualms about, uh, saying that. Well, Jeff, uh, with that, just like last season, we are creating the absolutely 100% completely accurate and definitive ranking of the third season of Babylon five.

This was a five star Fury episode. Jeff, where do you place Zha Doom? It is up to you to place to give us the final ranking of the season where you place. This will affect every other episode below it. Our current top five is war without in part one. I'm sorry, war without in part two. Number two is war Within War Without, in Part One.

Severed dreams, point of no return and ship of tears. All fantastic episodes. Does this one crack your top five, or where does it go?

Jeff: I think I've said this every time I've had to rank. This is hard. This is really hard. And this season is hard. So like as I'm looking at this list and I go down, cuz you're like the top five, those are all great episodes. And then as so is the top 6, 7, 8, like, the first time I can even poke a hole in an episode is number 11 with gray.

17 is missing. And that, and, and even that hole, like you, you strongly justified, you know, in ways. And so it's like, well, where can I really start poking holes in? Oh, okay. I can get down to number five with seek transient fear and that's where I can start. So 15, yes. Thank you. Number 15. This was a, oh my gosh, this season is great.

Okay. Um, yes, it's top five. Yes it's top three. Yes, it's top.

Brent: Is it the best episode of the season,

Jeff: Brent, it's the second best episode of the season. This is my number two for season three War Without end, the whole as a whole, but specifically part two, and the way that it matched up with Babylon squared seamlessly. That was our favorite episode out of the first

Brent: it was.

Jeff: I loved War. War Without End. I loved, I loved Z Doom.

I love Zaha Dom. And not the Planet. Not the planet. not the place, but the episode. It was fantastic. War Without, in part two is this is our, this is our number two episode.

Brent: Yeah. And Jeff, we'll have to have a real conversation about this when we get to the season wrap up where, you know, Do we do something where war without in parts one and two, sort of combine, or do we do something where that little trilogy messages from Earth point of no return and severe dreams, do those combine because those were really one story.

You know what I mean? Um, like, like is there something about, uh, and I don't think that's cheating. Like those are, those are a story. Uh, do or do they all stand on their own? I mean, ship of Tears came in and, and kind of broke up that little trilogy right there, just as Zha has just broken up this little duology of War Without End.

I'm excited to see how this goes. I, I think you're right. If I had to look at the entire season, my favorite single episode would be War Without in part two, but really it's the War Without End Duo. Yeah. Uh, which, which Jeff, if people out there are, uh, are, you know, you know, they've shotted his one movie and just showed it on the same night, I wouldn't be shocked at all.

At all. Um, Uh, but I mean, war Without End was absolutely Bar Bar by far my favorite episode. But Zaha is right there. And then you, and then you punch the, that three where Babylon five makes its independence from Earth like so Strong. And Jeff, that right there, that's like six episodes right there, right?

And then you've got Ship of Tears and, uh, rocks cried out and, and you know, re's death and how they cut that piece together. And Interludes and Emanations, which that's the one where Kosh gets it. Right. And, and then you got passing through Gase, which sets such an emotional tone for the entire season. You got Shadow Dancing, which was last week's episode, which was just, so, it was just a good episode that that set us in.

You had Gray 17, which Yeah, the, the horror side was goofy is All Get Out. But the other side of that thing with Naroon and Dalen was top notch quality tv. Uh, you had matters of honor coming right off of the, you know, the season, uh, deal. You had voice of authority with Chicky who was really weird, but my god, what that, like, the interference of Earth Force into babble on five and how, oh my God.

Jeff: impact was

Brent: oh my absolute. Then you had dusted dust with the drugs going back and forth, and even sick transit vir, which you said that's kind of where you sorta start. But even with that, I mean, Jeff,

Jeff: me slow you down. Lemme slow you down because Brent, Brent, we're done with Zaha Doom

Brent: oh,

Jeff: and next week we get to do exactly this conversation. Exactly what you're teasing, exactly what you're diving into. Next week we're watching the season three wrap up branches gave the prediction, he just showed you, it's a sneak preview.

What we're gonna do, we're gonna look at this season as a whole, and I gotta tell you something, season one, right? Let's just do a little, little look back here. Season one had very low lows and some pretty decent highs. Season two, right down the middle, right? It had some, some I, I'll say it had some garbage.

Uh, and, and then it had some of the best television we've ever seen season. With one single exception has been incredible.

Brent: it's been a great

Jeff: so,

so good.

Brent: it's had, it's had maybe a couple of Okay. Episode, like, like it's okay. Episodes are like some of the best episodes from previous seasons, like, you

Jeff: exactly. This was, this was 19 95, 19 96 that this season aired. You had, I mean, there's 22 episodes. You gotta have those quote filler episodes that they still put some stuff into. Except for one. Except for one that could have just never existed. But the other ones, even like Exogenesis. Here we go. I'm doing exactly what I told you to I cut you off on, but Exogenesis is kind of like, eh, whatever.

It was great and it

Brent: episode. It was a bug episode. You're going what Nobody likes. Bu when we set did infection way back in season, normally like, oh God, it's this episode. I know this episode. Oh, and it was a awful episode until 27 minutes in and then it turned on a dime. It was like, wow. That's actually a really good

Jeff: This is so good. Well, we're gonna have all these conversations next week, so many more, and we're gonna have the giveaway. For all of you that have left reviews that have gone during this conversation right now and popped into your pod catcher and left a review, you're in the drawing to get one of those star series.

Listen, thank you so much for joining us today as we discussed the season three finale, Zaha Doom. If you haven't already, please follow, subscribe wherever you're listening or watching us, and go now. If you haven't, for whatever wild reason you have not left a review, go do it now. Hey, Brent. Until next

Brent: Hey Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

Brent: Uh, so something we didn't talk about earlier in the episode that I just, I gotta, we gotta clear the air on and I just need to know for my own heart's sake, you'd never recast me in a future season, would you,

Jeff: um, oh, I, I mean,

Brent: Jeff?

Jeff: Dude. Hey, look, it, it is what it is, man. Like it is like, yeah. Peace, victory. Hey, and long life,